Skepticism

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EVENTS

Between me and my mind

A blog is a lousy social medium; heck, social media are lousy social media. I think lately that I’ve been wrestling far too much with the problem of community on the web, and I have become disillusioned. That this particular community has been under siege by trolls and slimers and shit-stirrers hasn’t helped, either, or that there is far too much cliquishness of a painfully artificial sort.

I must also say that I find the wider community we tried to build at Freethoughtblogs is less a unified group than a disparate collection of loosely affiliated blogs that have found a convenient hosting service, which doesn’t help my mood much, either. We are all objects in space, drifting, occasionally bouncing off each other or tugging gently at each other’s masses. And that’s about it.

So I’m making changes. I’m not even going to try to foster this thing called ‘community’ any more — I will be a cold dark ember of a star, following my own whims, drifting alone, not trying to create a hospitable atmosphere. If you like what I write, read it; if you want to comment on it, write; but I won’t be providing any special places for social interaction. I’ll also be laying down some new commenting rules to break apart any cliques.

The monitor system is dissolved. Thank you for your assistance! Instead, there is a link on the sidebar where you can report any problems directly to me.

Otherwise, there aren’t going to be any major changes in what I do here. All I’m doing is making what has turned into an unrewarding chore go away.

You can argue about these changes below, but I’m afraid my mind is made up and I will not be reinstituting traditions that have become a source of constant trouble.

I have to congratulate you for lasting this long. I would have given up a long, long time ago. The internet has fostered an amazingly uncivil environment because of the anonymity and lack of immediate face to face consequences of that uncivil behavior. Trying to create the same mood as a group of friends tossing back a few ales or vinos is impossible. Trolls generally don’t crash the lounge or living room where that group is having interesting and friendly discussion to quickly turn it into the equivalent of a contest of monkeys flinging feces. Trying to re-create the friendly environment has to get less and less rewarding as time progresses with the increase of trolls, possibility of being hacked, having people expect you to be a full time blog mod and all the other nastiness that has crept into the system since its inception back in the ’90s.

I hope you can take a quite a few moments of satisfaction that you kept things as interesting and pleasant and agreeable for as long as you did in the atmosphere of glaring jerkery that the internet has become.

In terms of policy (as opposed to motivation) this sounds much like the rules I suggested some weeks ago.

“Don’t be an asshole. PZM decides who is an asshole.” IMO for sites of this sort, rules along those lines are the only ones that work, so I don’t there was really much choice.

Most of the time, more specific procedures and community building and so on work only with a shared PROJECT, not jut some shared ideas. And such shared projects require enormous amounts of labor. The on-line sites I’ve seen be successful at community building have been devoted to common electoral goals, or focused issue groups, or certain types of fan sites, certain varieties of art and writing sites , certain types of cooking or gardening- and so on. Probably there are exceptions, but I suspect this rule of thumb covers about 90% of the cases.

Personally, I haven’t been active long nor often enough to notice too many of the issues you mentioned. I also extremely rarely visit the other blogs on here. So in both regards, I’m not very deep inside the community to begin with, I suppose. I’ll just wait and see whether this decision of yours will result in any noticeable differences for me/from my POV or not. That said, I hope that your change in policy (problems being reported directly to you rather than to intermediaries) doesn’t lead to more work and trouble for you rather than less.

Post-porcupine, I enjoyed reading the things that people got a bit shouty about: stuff for which people had real fire in their veins, real life hurt in their souls. Things got heated because it was important stuff to folks about whom I had never before had the remotest clue. But when it turns into divisive shit-flinging, that’s awful, and it becomes impossible even to listen, let alone contribute. I’ll still lurk listen and learn, PZed.

Long time lurker here (since Expelled). A shame to see the social threads going, but I can remember before TET so I’m sure there will still some sense of continuity between posts. TBH I stopped reading the Lounge a couple of years back as it felt too vicarious, but I enjoyed learning from arguments in the Thunderdome.

Pharyngula has always been a spiky place, but as many have noted there seems to be more unpleasantness since the shift in emphasis about three years back. Perhaps ‘Social Justice’ is too broad an umbrella to unite a blog commentariat (or even a blog network)? After all if you are for SJ you are clearly a Good Person but if you argue with one point you can rapidly become a Bad Person. Recent events at B&W have highlighted the problems caused by such binary thinking.

I would like to continue to read you in the future (time allowing), and I don’t completely share your glum analysis above. I have made more lasting friends here than in meatspace in 20 years, and you and many commenters inspired me use my brain and expand my horizon, which one can easily omit when on a fixed career path. So it wasn’t all bad.
No argument about the changes.

With the social nutwork disappearing from this site I would like to advocate for Lynna to be given her own FTB-space to continue her amazing course of reporting the world’s ills that regular news finds too scary to print. Even if it isn’t a regular blog, just links and her intro to the stories she has reported over the last few years. No one on this blog has received more of my mouse clicks.

With respect to the glum assessment I can’t think of how this site could have become more discouraging than to find out that your so-called secular/atheist/’logical’ allies included such a huge commenting contingent of scungy reptilian MRAs and rape-apologists (and rape-threateners). I considered myself a pessimist beforehand, but at least I thought genuine social change with regard to feminism could happen in decades. From the point I discovered the cockroaches under the cupboard I realized it was still centuries off because there really are that many reptilian brains still out there.

What rq said, also too. The posts will continue to be just as interesting, informative and thought-provoking, and if this lightens the load on you even a little then, well, there it is. Many thanks for all the work!

Regarding the new commenting rules, I’ll just point out that we’ll need some guidance on how to handle the off-topic side discussions that will inevitably pop up from time to time. We can’t exactly tell people to “take it to the ‘dome” when there isn’t one.

You finished Lounge #502 by thanking us for our participation, so I feel it’s only fitting to thank you, PZ, for providing so many installments of The Lounge, Thunderdome, and their predecessors in the first place. I like to think all these commenting threads on balance had far more ups than they had downs, and no one could sensibly begrudge you for ending something that had become a joyless chore to maintain. Even if we are mere objects in space drifting alone I hope there will be the occasional meeting of minds anyway (along with the inevitable Firefly allusions). Again – thankyou.

I am sorry that it has become a chore. I have stayed out of the latest arguments, not through virtue but through a sense of helplessness: People I like and want to respect are hurting each other. I do not want them to fight, but it is easy for me to say that: if someone is being hurt I have no moral authority to tell them they should not fight what is hurting them. But I wish people would not hurt each other. I wish I had the gift of kindness myself.
There is a quote from one of Edmund Crispin’s mysteries that I want right now, but I cannot find the book, though I saw it just the other day. I can find nothing but “Swan Song” when I’m not looking for it, and now I can find Sayers and LeGuin and Babson and C.S. Freaking Lewis, but not “Swan Song”. So be it.
Anyway: I am sad. That is all.

from Beatrice
Could you please post this for me?
It will take me ages to type it out on the mobile.

Thanks for everything PZ, I don’t think I would have made it this long in your place. I’m saddened by your decision because the community here means a lot to me, even with all the criticism it has received lately.

Maybe, being a member, I have trouble seeing all the bad sides. Anyway, there’s probably no point in arguing about who is or isn’t wrong now that you have made your decision. I’m going to keep hanging around of course, and I hope those who only frequented the Lounge will start commenting in other threads.

I don’t use other social media, so this will probably mean losing some friends. I have to admit, that makes me choke up a bit.

“In a startling turn of events, blogger known for being snarky towards people he disagrees with develops community of commenters who are snarky towards people they disagree with.”

As a lurker and long-ago poster who had some nonstandard views and does not relish massive commenting conflagrations, this result was visible from a long way away. I do appreciate that PZ is concerned with it, however.

I’ve been drifting away for awhile now, my lost and alone have been such that I cannot bring myself to share them. Yes, I understand the stupidity of that.

And now I find that the mass that had been at the centre of my outward spiral is gone. You’d think it would be a relief; it’s not. It’s just another in a long sequence of losses and endings that make up the bulk of life. So be it.

Thank you PZ, you gave it a good go, and for what it’s worth I’m grateful for having been a small part of it.

Does this mean The Mended Drum is also no more? I was under the impression the point of that was to replace T’dome and The Lounge. I didn’t read either very much, but it was nice to have somewhere to have an off-topic conversation. For example, I have just finished an excellent book that I wanted to recommend to people, but am now unsure where to do so.

If that’s the case, then I am disappoint, but it’s PZ’s blog and his decision. I’ll continue to read. Looking forward to reading the new commenting rules when they are ready.

To PZ,
I’m a very infrequent commenter, but I just want to join in with the others to say thank you, PZ, for keeping those threads around as long as you did. Even though I’ve never really been a part of the Horde, I found support in the Lounge when I needed it most, and I enjoyed lurking on the conversations in the T-dome. I am sad to see them go, but I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you to have a full time job, have a family life, write blog posts daily, moderate said blog posts, AND try to foster an online community. That’s a full plate for one human. For what it’s worth, I think the community that you supported is a damn good one, despite any flaws that made it difficult and unpleasant for you to maintain. I will still check your blog daily and read your posts. Thank you for what you do.

To Horde,
Thank you for the support you have given me. I’m a relative outsider, but I’ve been treated with nothing but compassion by you folks. Thank you a million times over. I’ll still read all the comments and I hope to keep seeing those nyms I recognize, so I can know that you wonderful people are still out there and doing ok.

While it’s sad, it’s understandable. Thank you PZ for having given me the opportunity to meet and speak with some amazing people. Thank you for having worked so hard all these years to keep things in order.

PZ – I’m guessing that, back when you started this blog, you were thinking something like, “I wonder if even a dozen people will read this thing?” So, you’ll get nothing from me but congratulations. You’ve outgrown this phase and are ready to move on – that’s cool. You’ve still had outstanding impact.

I always thought that if someone wanted to write a biblical story that really resonated, it’d be about jesus, the reform-minded blogger and twitterer who was hounded to death by trolls. He finally quits, of course, when the trolls get his hosting service, rome.com, to cut him off by making false claims of copyright and trademark infringement. Finally he gives up in disgust. The end.

Well, hopefully this will help spare PZ some exhaustion and sanity. But I also hope we can see these new commenting rules soon, because I am not sure if I alone with this, but I feel somewhat confused and adrift and hope that some clear expectations, some clarity regarding what went wrong and what needs to be done to go right, will help with some of that uncertainty and anxiety. If not, whatever, hopefully I am the only one, because I can just personally adjust to dealing with uncertainties.

Thumper, yes, the Lounge and the Thunder Drum are gone. Too much effort to regulate, and fosters the “cliquishness” and “tribalism” that PZ does not want to see. (And probably other reasons too, I am just attempting to paraphrase from memory, so even that much could be wrong)

Hey PZ
You may be a lonely star, but by virtue of your (online) mass, and the momentum and proximity of your followers, you will always have those that orbit your presence. Some closer and faster, others slower and more distant. Please continue to shine brightly.

My main concern with the new rules is that they don’t privilege people who’ve been here a long time and know how to basically game the system and curry favor with an existing group. It’s not easy. Will probably have to try and impose them, see how it works, and modify as I go.

Dear PZ, I’ve been reading your blog for, eight years maybe? I used to be a regular commenter, but for the last few years have mostly lurked. Why? Disillusionment with the toxicity. You’ve encouraged that toxicity all along, and the only difference now is that it has turned on a personal friend of yours.

If you really want to resurrect this blog, find the top twenty commenters from the last six months and give them all a 3-month commenting ban. Seriously. After that, a better dynamic might have been established. Or limit everyone to at most 3 comments a day.

This comment wont make me popular. PZ, I do mostly agree with most of your aims; but I’m disillusioned with your tactics. I hope you are too.

Back in the olden days, when I was working on my degree in Human Services, we spend an entire year discussing the concept of community. The final analysis was that it was difficult to create and maintain one so, no surprise to anyone here.
Thanks for creating this space, PZ, and giving me a place to lurk amongst the passionate. And biology!

You only touched on other blogs here at FtB tangentially — are you considering any policy changes outside of Pharyngula? I used to try to read 8 or 10 regularly, but kept circling back to Pharyngula and Dispatches because of three principles:

1) updated regularly (honestly, what’s the point of hosting a blog that hasn’t had a new entry in more than, say, 14 days? Or doesn’t average, say, three per week?);
2) broad content (rather than, say, three doses per day of Islam Is Bad, or my mental health issues this morning);
3) not too much of a focus on the author, the author’s state of mind, the author’s breakfast, the author’s mother, the author’s boss, the author’s most recent bowel movement, the author’s significant other, the author’s medication regimen, the author’s weight-loss plan, etc.

There are a bunch of really good writers at FtB, but sometimes I think that the lack of some broader editorial principles leads to a certain hamster-on-the-treadmill OCD at a number of blogs, where some gentle editorial guidance could generate a lot more regular readership.

In any case, thanks for all the great essays, and keep it up, under whatever new rules you deem fit.

Toxicity is deciding that you’re better than everyone else, and thinking the solution is to tear down other people. Toxicity is inventing a hierarchy of readers here, and deciding that for the good of the whole we have to eradicate the portion that doesn’t include you.

I am not planning to kick anyone out (other than the usual trolls and assholes) — what I want to do is keep everyone here but make it clear that no one is more privileged than anyone else.

So no, your comment isn’t going to be popular with me, and it reflects the problems I want to fix.

By the way, no resurrection is needed. It isn’t dead, and hasn’t been.

#43, anbheal: Nope. There is no central authority of any kind, individual blogs have no obligation to any other, and apparently everyone likes it that way. It’s also in our rules that there be no editorial interference.

I probably won’t be commenting or reading much here in the future outside of the racism thread, and that one’s up for renewal (and probably a slow death) in August. I won’t be keeping it up as I have been, though that decision is completely independent from PZ’s, I swear (changes to my work schedule, etc.). Right now, I’m set at just slowing down the posting, but I might stop altogether.
This feels a lot like breaking up.

This gives me a massive Sad—but I understand it. Self-care is a necessity, or it sooner or later becomes Chainsaw Massacreeee! time.
And squid have too many arms for that to be safe for bystanders, or scenery.

I appreciate all that you have done to foster discussion of important issues and provide a safe online space, PZ. I am sorry that the experience has become so stressful and unpleasant. I will continue reading your always interesting and informative posts, and comment when I actually have something more or less relevant to say.

PZ @47
I know that, and I understand. But I came here for the community, and without the community I don’t have the investment to be here as often (or all the time). I’ll be reading, but I don’t know how everything else will work out.
It’s funny about the self-care, I completely understand how keeping up two open threads plus all the other contentious material (haha clickbait haha) is a stressor and time-consuming, but… the Lounge was a big part of self-care for me. So it’s a matter of finding alternatives, rather than trying to make Pharyngula fit my needs. For information and interesting news, sure. But not the self-care.
Sincerely, though, PZ, major thanks for all that you’ve put into this place. It’s been great.

As an OM from way back when and one of the final 3 Something-Or-Other-of-Reason I say it’s your own damn blog and you can change it however you want for whatever reason you want.

I notice that on the left there’s still a link to the #Pharyngula chat room on synIRC. People who bonded on the Endless Thread (aka the Lounge and Thunderdome) and want to continue it might want to see if that forum can take its place.

If anyone wants a good replacement for the lounge, google allows for simple, relatively private forums. With PZ’s permission, one could even use the Pharyngula name or something. The privacy levels can be set, from open to everyone and searchable, to invite only, and several stages in between.

I use google groups/forums for a lot of my online boardgaming and it is pretty easy to set up and run.

Thanks for keeping going PZ. I’ve actually been reading (and occasionally arguing with) you since the days of IIDB (long, long before Pharyngula!), and I’ll continue to do so, although I’m not nearly as active as I once was online.

Seems reasonable, I do not know what precisely has brought this on, but I have definitely noticed some of the cliquishness and it has pushed me away from regularly commenting, and simply enjoying reading the comments as much as I once did. From some of the comments I take it there has been some stuff going on in some of the social threads, but I do not follow them, so I guess I missed out on something.

Pierce: That’s not what was written. He’s closing down the two threads that were largely unmoderated, because they tended to turn into hellholes. He’s going to continue banning trolls and assholes, as he notes in the comments not far above you.

Pierce R. Butler: I don’t get the impression he is going to moderate less or stop moderating. Though the rhetoric and imagery in the main post seem to imply that, his 44 implies that he is going to still be banning bigots and trolls the same as always (which I doubt is surprising). And comments about new rules to break up cliques and reducing Regular Privilege imply at least some degree of future moderation as well (though I suppose it wouldn’t necessarily involve moderation if PZ is lucky and everyone complies with the new system and self-regulates, which is not impossible, but I imagine some involvement by PZ is likely going to be needed). So at very least, we can all mourn the loss of the social spaces, but I don’t foresee PZ abandoning ship to a degree where Pharyngula becomes Reddit.

Regarding Lounge regulars keeping in touch: Couldn’t one of y’all volunteer to create a basic wordpress/blogger blog to continue conversations, and continue to hangout on the webs? Basically make your own off-site Lounge to transfer the conversations to?

I only recently became more active and I have been a reader for about a decade. I will also add to the thanks to PZ for all of the hard work. While I will miss the Lounge and Thunderdome/The Mended Drum, I understand it if it’s exceeding his tolerance and he thinks the dynamic needs to change.

I’m optimistic. Shaking up things can be good and what is happening here is actually a more widespread problem. I heard a similar situation being described at the Netroots Nation conference on the latest This Week In Blackness podcast as attempts to draw attention to violence against black people involved political infighting. It’s nice to know there are other people working on the problem when finding solutions.

One nice effect is that more people may contribute to comments on posts which are places where links and stories can be shared when on-topic.

If anyone is interested in making sure people who don’t like social justice communities don’t profit from this, might I suggest asking the people at the Atheist+ forums if the Lounge can move there? (emphasizing asking. Floods of people can be disruptive) Making the Atheist+ forums more active would be a nice side effect if people choose it.

PZ, I’m sad to see it go this way, as I did love the community I found here. However and as I and others have said before, this is your space, I will abide by your rules.

******Everyone please feel free to drop me a line via email. Rawnaeris @ gmail
I have always dropped in and out of commenting, but most everyone here has helped me in some way over the last 5 years that I’ve been reading here. And so when I say everyone I mean it. If you ever wonder “did she mean me?” The answer is “yes.”

Also, my blog is infrequently updated, but I’ll throw up a thread for people to talk and sort out any contact info that might be desired. The link is in my ‘nym.
***
Again, thanks for hosting this space for as long as you have PZ. It is appreciated.

I rarely read the Lounge or Thunderdrome and the few times I commented there I was totally ignored, so I realized I wasn’t part of “the group.” So these changes don’t affect me at all. I’ll continue reading what PZ posts and enjoying the comments there. I guess I feel the same way about “churches” for atheists, where they can have a sense of community. I’ve been to a couple of atheist get-togethers when I’ve visited the US and was bored shitless. Maybe I’ve gotten too insular from living in Japan for so long. PZ, thanks for the great posts and I’ll continue enjoying those.

I forgot to also give my thanks to PZ for providing the spaces that he has for as long as he has. And for being a clear voice for social justice, providing insightful commentary, a platform for insightful commenters, and links to other sites talking about those important issues, despite the fact that it comes at the cost of getting a constant flood of hate and having to play constant, irritating games with dishonest and/or abusive internet characters. Despite the time and effort and stress, despite being a privileged straight white male college professor, he has fought hard for those who don’t share the privilege, and I imagine everyone here appreciates that, as well as many readers, though he has lost commenters and readers for taking those strong stances on behalf of people facing aggressions that others would much prefer to ignore. Pharyngula has been an invaluable place for me personally, and even if the community’s vitriol and divisiveness makes the question of its “goodness” a matter of debate, I have been educated in many positive ways by this place and I doubt I am alone.

Since this is happening (lookin’ at you, Anne and Saad!), to those who may be unconnected, I can be reached at: tee ay ay arr pee eye enn ess aytch (at) the mail that is hot. From thence I am connected to a few more people, and from there – to everyone.
I hope an alternative can be worked out somehow.

Those forums are pretty much defunct, and I would be surprised if they are around much longer.

That sounds like an argument for trying to move people there if they can get what they had here. It would be an undertaking though. I’ve always been surprised by just how something like a single website can become a social focus in a way that makes it hard to move people.

While of course the first thing that came to mind when I first commented upthread @ #16 was to thank PZ (which thanks bear repeating! – I will still be reading here every day) I forgot that I would also like to well-wish and thank a lot of other people for being helpul, supportive, informative and very often very kind.

Pierce R. Butler #75
Monitors were never moderators.
The only things here that are defunct are the specifically social thread and the specifically off-topic thread.
For now, everything else continues as before, with precisely the same moderation.

The Atheism Plus forums are still around, although as qwints points out, they’re not particularly active at the moment.

Another issue is the difference between multi-topic forums, and endless thread type forums. They foster different cultures, and the latter are probably more sustainable.

If people are looking for a home for a new endless thread type conservation, I could install something on the (currently underused) Atheism Plus server. It doesn’t have to be “part” of Atheism Plus (I appreciate that there are two different forum cultures), and it could even be under a different domain name if that’s what people want. Can anyone recommend free forum software that is suitable for endless thread type conversations?

I tend to have an outsider opinion, because I grew up too poor or too Asian or too something else to be popular. I also don’t go along to get along and have trouble not showing when I don’t like someone.

When I was young I would read about cruelty in human groups like the Salem Witch Trials with morbid interest to see if I could unlock the puzzle of the human heart. Cruelty such as the GOP villainizing the poor is so common it is banal. The only thing interesting about it as how they sell themselves as actually persecuted when they are bullying marginalized groups like LGBTQ.

What troubles me is the dynamic of nearly all groups to form cliques and compete for power in a cruel manner. A lot of people who were formerly bullied develop empathy or they were bullied because they have empathy. But even among bullying victims there are some that will bully others. I was reading about about a highschool football team that had a hazing power dynamic. Freshman were bullied even to the point of sexual assault. And some of the former victims would then bully the freshman when they were on the top of the pyramid. It helped them to feel powerful, and not feel like the weak victim in their own eyes and in the eyes of others.

I almost wonder how inevitable it is for groups large and small but especially large for opportunistic people to try to take advantage of the group dynamic. I don’t agree with Penn Jilette about many things, but he once answered a man at TAM about nonbelievers grouping together for political advocacy, that he didn’t agree with that because that’s where you get a problem with “pigs”. We do see this with ostensibly good intentions like Bush saying he would liberate the women of Afghanistan and the same in Iraq with freedom yet once his goals of threat neutralization and restoring oil access were achieved for his group these peoples are no freer than before.

I see group dynamics fractures in the atheo/skeptosphere too. Believe me I do know what it feels like to talk about racism only to be talked over and the narrative to be shifted to exonerate people of racism or even to be flipped and be accused of racism for even asking them to stop. But using abusive language never helps in my opinion.

As a middle school teacher, I have seen time and again power dynamics that favor the cruelest. Most curry the favor of the bully, and even among those a bully will single out someone to stay on top of the pecking order. I’ve even seen where expelling the bully causes the group to resettle with a new bully sometimes a former victim is on top. I think this runs out of control where a school is overcrowded and supervision is lacking, incompetent, or uncaring. And too the more toxic an environment is with stress like heavy handed, and unjust authority the more this dynamic emerges because the group is trying to destress by aggression.

The dynamic I often see with with fights is that there are agitators that aren’t involved that escalate the matter on both sides, because the fight is entertainment for them.

There is a group dynamic going on here though it may not have all the elements of bad group dynamics that I was just talking about.

IMO banning abusive language would help, and if a discussion is becoming troublesome to manage to freeze it, and if it can’t settle to a more manageable level close it. Bad faith actors and pot stirrers will learn it isn’t going anywhere, so there may be less disruption of discussions later and less intervention necessary.

I don’t know if the comments will become more pedestrian as a result, but that has being easy to manage going for it.

I do not remember when I started reading Pharyngula but I think the computer I used was made out of sticks, leaves and sun baked clay. People have come and gone, topics shift and the culture leans this way and that. Some years I have come by just once or twice a week, other years it was daily. It changes again. If there is less trolling and cliquishness then the changes will be for the good. I for one intend to pop up a large bucket of popcorn eat half and offer the rest to the tentacled denizens sleeping in the deep.
Thanks PZ for all the work you have put into our educations and amusement.

Over the past couple of years I’ve been slowly extricating myself from a community with which I had become very, very involved. I put a lot of time and energy into the community, to the detriment of my career and, eventually, my own physical and mental well-being. In the 2 years since I’ve really cut back, I’d hoped to have found that maybe the time was well spent, that maybe it was worth the pain. I haven’t found that to be true.

That may or may not resonate with what PZ or anyone else is going through with their own communities, but it taught me an important lesson about taking a step back when participating becomes a burden. It was hard to step away but in hindsight my only regret was that I didn’t step back and exercise self care sooner.

Al Dente: More likely, you’re like me–you don’t track the threads sufficiently to keep up with the pace of posting. PZ would often start new threads while I was halfway through the old one, so I gave up trying to follow them. I occasionally peeked in, sniped if there was a comment that felt like I had a reply to, and didn’t worry about whether anyone bothered to appreciate my nuggets of golden wisdom, or whatever those droppings turned out to be.

Well, you would, wouldn’t you, being (as it were) so caught up by Crispin?

I have a copy right here, so if you care to describe vaguely what you’re looking for, maybe I can turn it up for you. (I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone, outside my immediate family who I all of course converted immediately many years ago after I had stumbled upon a copy of The Moving Toyshop, who reads Crispin—sadly; so I feel some obligation to help out a fellow fan.)

A vast number of my comments on the Lounge and Thunderdome were totally ignored.
I lived through it.

Many of my comments in the Lounge weren’t responded to, nor did I really expect they would be. But it was an outlet for the daily frustrations and joys that just happen with life, especially for one who’s expectations had to be revised due to circumstances.

I was part of a small online community that had that rule, but not the middle school version. Basically, swearing was okay, but swearing at people was not. The idea being that venting frustration is okay, but if you feel like you have to hurt someone, it’s because moderation is already needed and will be more effective anyway.

It worked well for us; however, that was an actively moderated space, with several levels of administrative powers and responsibilities, and private fora for the admins to discuss problems and correct each other when a mistake was made.

Honestly, I don’t see a way for rules to be nuanced without enforcement being a chore. On the one hand, interpretation is work which suffers under fatigue, creating inconsistency which will frustrate everyone. (Favouritism! Hypocrisy! Hurting allies!) On the other, delegation requires infrastructure and introduces more points of failure. (Cabal! Ignoring insider misdeeds! Privileging the X exclusive!) But then, I’m not terribly imaginative.

Popping in to say “I have a sad” just like many of my friends here. I didn’t know my Lounge hiatus would become permanent, but I’m in the same boat as rq. (yaddayadda PZ doesn’t owe us anything, obviously, and it’s his blog, and his life, and his mental and emotional energy). Anyway. Hellogoodbyeseeyalater, everybody.

Thanks a lot, PZ, for all the hard work. I would look at what you do in terms of the conventions, posting on the blog, providing interesting and safe spaces, and then your health issues. I would ask myself, how in heck you did it? I felt I was “giving in” to my own health issues in comparison, but then, I had to.
Everything changes. Everything ends. That’s why there’s room for new things, which we may or may not like as much.
I hope you get into a better space in terms of balancing things and then have a lot of fun. I believe that’s the whole point, having fun.
All the best to you and yours.

In my experience, strong language is hardly a concern at all outside of what I dub the ‘demographic slurs’. It is entirely possible for a hostile commenter to switch from swearing to non-swearing without losing any of their hostility, thanks to the wonders of passive agression, bad faith argument, uncharitable scrutiny, and of course general sneering / snide shittery. In my view, the pattern was laid down years ago, with PZM’s repeated encouragement and even celebration of agression towards interlopers with terrible arguments.

In my view, the solution to this is not more rules, but a reversal of that encouragement. Take the comment threads over at Jesos and Mo as an example of a much better commenting environment (albeit with fewer people, which probably helps keep things calm). The threads over there are much less aggressive whilst still being a hotbed of debate and dismantlement of apologetics. Not because the people are supremely unflappable or anything – many of the people there are, or have been, Pharyngulites – but because the Author will repeatedly make attempts to de-escalate the more boisterous arguments. Compare that to Myers’ old habit of actually bragging about having a vicious comment environment, and I think the single biggest cause for the difference is revealed.

It’s weird arriving today and seeing this, but I’ve already given up trying to catch up with whatever happened in the last couple months.

For what is worth, the Pharyngula community helped me a lot in coming to terms with myself and accepting who I am, especially as a lurker, or in the few times I commented with an unnoteworthy username years ago, and for this I’m grateful.

Just to re-state it for those who are saying things that make me wonder: Pharyngula is not going away. Maybe everyone gets that, but just in case….

I didn’t visit the Lounge or Thunderdome/The Mended Drum very often at all, but I have been one more who’s been grateful for the community here for all that the members have done, and I hope, will continue to do. It’s going to be different, but not gone.

I am sad to read this and would add a thanks, PZ. There were many times when TET or TD were a lifeline to another world that I very much pulled upon. Your continuance of these spaces was a comfort and I very much appreciated that fact which is part of what makes me sad. It also makes me sad because those spaces have not been something that I needed of late. Times change. As do we. I wish you well PZ.
(If anyone does remember me fondly, or should another space crop up that gives an echo, I can be found at an email very similar to a hot male at horusbikes. Besides that, I do with the book of faces too, but I suspect anyone who I got on with that uses that space has already made a connection there.)
I also suspect that this is as good a time as any to let the oh emm go. Sigh, it was a lovely flower, but it has wilted.

@lilandra #99
I don’t think that was a particularly helpful clarification. There’s no clear standard for what counts as abusive language. One person’s “abusive” is another person’s “perfectly fine”, is a third person’s “I know it’s abusive, but I’ll pretend it’s perfectly fine so I can get away with saying it anyway”.

Leerudolph@88: The bit I am thinking about may be unduly depressing, and I can’t remember if anything in it might be offensive, but it was the quote from the presumably-burglar who helped Fen rescue Adam from the house, about everything to be grateful for. I recall it being kind of snarky. And thank you. Come to think of it, I haven’t read Moving Toyshop in years, nor the one about the lost Shakespeare play (I think that was Crispin) nor the Edwin Droody one.

I was commenting here before there was an endless thread, and I’ll continue to comment now, at least when I have the time. Not having somewhere to conveniently send derails and off-topic stuff is a wee bit annoying, but it’s not a big deal, either.

Finally. Perhaps normal atheists can post here again without arousing a shit-storm from A+ atheists with special needs agendas. And perhaps PZ can again join the ranks of admirable atheists. It was so, once.

PZ is an admirable atheist, whereas those you appear to admire aren’t admirable for known reasons. Your attitude is not one I would want to be in a leadership position. Maybe you need some self-evaluation, and need to decide whether or not ALL your fellow humans are your equal. If so, that is the A+ position simply stated.

I understand that PZ and his fans (his regular commentaters here) are now more into Feminism rather than Atheism, just as seems to be the case for Thunderfoot, which disappoints me. The fight for gender equality is a fine thing, but it is not what I was looking for or what stood out for me in these two gentlemen. What attracted me was their Atheism. Hence my current disappointment.

Oh, you know, anything that isn’t important to ‘normal atheists’ like danishdynamite. I assume by using ‘normal’ to refer to himself and to differentiate him from A=/feminist atheists that means he is currently living life on the easiest game setting. No need for any agendas for him.

I wish Thunderfoot would drop his feminist-takedown videos and get back to taking down creationists and other anti-science people, which is the reason I found him in the first place. I wish PZ would do the same (i.e cut back on the “feminist-hero” angle and get back to basics)

Finally. Perhaps normal atheists can post here again without arousing a shit-storm from A+ atheists with special needs agendas. And perhaps PZ can again join the ranks of admirable atheists. It was so, once.

Those gosh darn “people” who fail to be cis-het, white, male and able-bodied are always ruining things for all the normal people, amirite?!

@Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls: “PZ is an admirable atheist, whereas those you appear to admire aren’t admirable for known reasons. Your attitude is not one I would want to be in a leadership position. Maybe you need some self-evaluation, and need to decide whether or not ALL your fellow humans are your equal. If so, that is the A+ position simply stated.”

All humans are my equal in the sense that they deserve equal treatment no matter their skin color, sex, etc.

Funny, I don’t find that to be related to atheism.
Also, this what A+ believes.
The only difference is that they also look at reality, and see that currently people ARE NOT treated equally and have not been for quite some time. Do you deny that reality? And if not, how does that affect your application of “equal treatment” principle, if at all?

All humans are my equal in the sense that they deserve equal treatment no matter their skin color, sex, etc.

Now, the problem with your statement. It ignores cis-white-male privilege, and pretends everybody is your equal. But the results are not equal. Unless you are working to make the results equal, you aren’t a true equalist, just a pretend one, and that is where A+ was, trying to make society truly equal in results. If that isn’t your goal, you may as well move on.

@ anteprepro: “Funny, I don’t find that to be related to atheism.
Also, this what A+ believes.
The only difference is that they also look at reality, and see that currently people ARE NOT treated equally and have not been for quite some time. Do you deny that reality? And if not, how does that affect your application of “equal treatment” principle, if at all?”

@Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls: “Now, the problem with your statement. It ignores cis-white-male privilege, and pretends everybody is your equal. But the results are not equal. Unless you are working to make the results equal, you aren’t a true equalist, just a pretend one, and that is where A+ was, trying to make society truly equal in results. If that isn’t your goal, you may as well move on.”

@Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls: “Now, show with evidence (empirical evidence is part of free thinking), that everybody is equal at the end of the day, not just at the beginning before your privilege comes into play.”

#123 danishdynamite
You contradict yourself: Apparently, atheism is only about a lack of belief in gods, so why would you want to add on a neccessity to attack what you define as the enemy? It so happens that PZ considers the enemy to be different things to you and he is motivated to work towards their defeat. I am glad he does, Pharyngula is the most consistently enjoyable reading on the web (IMO).

By your definition, a blog about atheism, has precisely one post and would be stunningly boring. It’s the social justice, science, entertainment, politics, ethics, news, etc, etc that make this place worth coming back to every day for the last decade.

Which is where we disagree. I will work to eradicate religion. Once this is achieved, to some agreed-upon degree, then let’s work on other problems. Till then, atheism is what the dictionary says.

Ah, a dictionary atheist, worthless trash at the end of the day. Once you reject religion, you should also reject all laws and attitudes based on those religions, and as part of rejecting religion, work toward a more equable society. That is atheism in action.
Makes any atheist who goes beyond the dictionary definition your better, and somebody for people like me to follow. You have nothing to offer but inaction.

@danishdynamite
1. If I take all of your comments at face value, are you suggesting that PZ is not an admirable atheist because of the results of advocating for things related to the “+” in “Atheist+”? If that is the case what is the point of appealing to the definition of atheism? The definition of atheism does not suggest anything about what PZ should write about.

2. What do you mean by the enemy is “religion”? This is not football. If what the religious believe in terms of narrative does not reflect reality, then “religion” is a collection of perfectly natural beliefs, ideas and actions. What are the manifestations of the harm done by religion? How would you suggest we prioritize what we focus on as a community since a simple lack of belief suggests nothing about what we should do?

3. If atheists are a community united by what they are not, and since the definition of atheist suggests nothing about what we should do, why do you oppose people organizing around things in the “+” that are in fact harms associated with religion? Atheism and religion as communities have problems with race, sex, gender and more. There is no reason to only oppose the things that are only in the religious community, if in fact those things actually exist when the false narratives are stripped out and one focuses on belief, idea and action.

@Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy: “Atheism has everything to do with my view on non-religious matters. If gods and religion are not real, I have to use real world facts to figure out how to treat people.”

@Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy:”To clarify: you can’t claim to believe in equality if you expect marginalized people who happen to be atheists to wait until you’re good and ready to fight for equality.”

I mean you’re literally saying that you want to make sure you’ve eliminated every obstacle in your path before anyone else even thinks about trying to catch up to you. That’s pretty much the exact opposite of equality.

@Blattafrax:”You contradict yourself: Apparently, atheism is only about a lack of belief in gods, so why would you want to add on a neccessity to attack what you define as the enemy? It so happens that PZ considers the enemy to be different things to you and he is motivated to work towards their defeat. I am glad he does, Pharyngula is the most consistently enjoyable reading on the web (IMO).
By your definition, a blog about atheism, has precisely one post and would be stunningly boring. It’s the social justice, science, entertainment, politics, ethics, news, etc, etc that make this place worth coming back to every day for the last decade.”

I want atheists of every political opinion to fight the main enemy, i.e. religion. I don’t want divisions, splittings, etc due to other things.

I don’t think it’s desirable or even possible to keep a laser-focus on ‘fighting religion’ without also addressing many of the social problems which have traditionally been grounded in religion. Social justice issues intersect with atheism because none of us (including you) value an “atheism” which is born and lives in a vacuum. You’re an atheist for a reason. If that reason involves science, history, integrity, honesty, skepticism, and reason itself, then there are a lot of other topics you can legitimately address AS an atheist and/or humanist and/or rationalist and/or science advocate and so forth.

But you don’t need to address them yourself. It seems to me that an awful lot of hostility is often directed towards people who are specializing in a particular aspect of a reason-based world view on the assumption that they must necessarily HATE anyone else who isn’t focused on the same issue. But I don’t see that. Mostly I just see A+ atheists not wanting other people to tell them what to focus on. And other atheists worried that A+ atheists are telling THEM what to do.

I read all PZ’s posts but tend to stay away from the social justice threads because I don’t really have anything unique or valuable to add. I may read them for a while to learn things and then go read something else which intersects with what I’m good at. My interests, like yours, are more towards apologetics and pseudoscience. But the last thing I’m going to do is jump in and tell people to change the topic, or do something else other than what they’re doing. I think those other topics are very important. And I also think that most of the arguments and divisions are ultimately healthy. They denote growth. They signal the doing of philosophy. They’re part of progress and it’s about time.

I’m still stuck in old school gnu atheism. But given that the Great God Debate is far from over, that’s not useless. It’s all valuable.

Danishdynamite,
Actually, it is because of the + in Atheist+ that I am an atheist at all. I could quite happily call myself an agnostic and leave the believers to their delusions were it not for the fact that they use their delusions to justify oppression of large classes of people. I could go on my privileged, white, cis, male way and simply enjoy life.

It is the use of religion to justify injustice and repression that forces me to say, “No, your sky daddy is not responsible for your beliefs and their consequences. YOU are responsible…you and you alone in a Universe that would just as soon we were all inanimate matter.”

If I shirk the +, I ignore the definition of what atheism means in life to merely embrace the dictionary definition. A philosophy that is based on a negative (e.g. rejection of deities) is not a philosophy that will prosper. We have to show what that philosophy allows us to embrace.

What, exactly, is it about religion that motivates you to work against it, danishdynamite? Is it the inequity? The unfairness of a system that benefits the powerful? Or is it just because they’re wrong?

Ah, a dictionary atheist, worthless trash at the end of the day. Once you reject religion, you should also reject all laws and attitudes based on those religions, and as part of rejecting religion, work toward a more equable society. That is atheism in action.
Makes any atheist who goes beyond the dictionary definition your better, and somebody for people like me to follow. You have nothing to offer but inaction.

Fighting against religion just because it’s wrong is a perfectly fine reason to fight. It’s just not the only reason. It’s not even the only valid reason — even if it’s necessary to include it somewhere around the foundations.

If you have nothing to offer, show us with your silence. If you have something concrete to offer, other than your opposition to religion, offer it. Or, go away.
You want your position to be respected, you must perforce show respect for the position of non-dictionary atheists fighting for social justice. That doesn’t mean you have to join. Just go over there with the rest of the dictionary atheists, and stay out of our way. That I can respect.

Fighting against religion just because it’s wrong is a perfectly fine reason to fight. It’s just not the only reason. It’s not even the only valid reason — even if it’s necessary to include it somewhere around the foundations.

True, but people who believe in fairies are equally wrong about their beliefs. That doesn’t really detail why we should be motivated to correct them.

Stating that you fight against religion because they are merely wrong is valid, but empty of consequences which can affect meaningful changes to people’s lives who are currently suffering due to the beliefs espoused by the religious and the acts it empowers them to commit. If you want none of the latter but all of the former then you’re quite simply a bigot. The effects of false beliefs matter more than the beliefs themselves, and when you actually examine all the inequities supposedly attributable to religion alone, turning an eye toward your own community, and you find just as much the rampant inequity, then that indicates the original motivation was misplaced, and it’s not simply religion what we need to combat, but the effects of religion which have created a symbiotic relationship with our culture as well.

Many ‘atheists’ do NOT want to think about how religion poisons *everything*. They don’t want to re-examine their beliefs, notions, or attitudes. Such as their views on women, for example. They desperately don’t want to think that religion has a large basis in the negative view of women, so they find evo-psych or other ‘science’ reasons for why women (or non-whites, or ‘beta males’, or whatever) should be treated poorly.

And I absolutely REFUSE to ‘stick together’ with someone who holds the view that my only purpose in life is to be a penis receptacle.

You want your position to be respected, you must perforce show respect for the position of non-dictionary atheists fighting for social justice. That doesn’t mean you have to join. Just go over there with the rest of the dictionary atheists, and stay out of our way. That I can respect.

I don’t think danishdynamite is really only a “dictionary atheist,” since someone who really truly wanted to confine their activism to dictionary atheism alone would spend all their time arguing about the definition of atheism and from what I can tell danishdynamite likes posts which deal with arguments against the existence of God and/or the virtue of religion. In which case, danishdynamite has a lot of company in Pharyngula. He or she doesn’t have to go “over there.” This is the community they want and welcome.

But it’s diverse and yes, dd needs to “stay out of the way” of threads or aspects they’re not as interested in. That ought to be easy. It’s also sensible. It’s pretty much what we do in any large group.

Hi all, your back-and-forth with danishdynamite really clarified an issue for me about the nature of atheism. I thought I would post it here incase it helps anyone else.

In summary, I never really bought the argument than atheism logically entails liberal views (I just happen to have liberal views). Accordingly, I was previously swayed a bit by the argument (sort of mounted by danishdynamite) that atheism+ represents some sort of addition to, or deviation from, “core” atheism – which is focused more on criticizing religion. However, what the above discussion has made clear to me is that the real core of atheism is simply stating that you believe there are not gods and any deviation from this is an example of atheism plus something else. For atheism+ it is social justice that is added. For danishdynamite and (most of) the atheism of the previous decades, it is a desire to criticize religions and to proselytize atheism that is added. Neither of these can make any claim to be closer to “true”/”normal”/”essential” atheism. So, rather than showing that atheism does actually entail progressive values, to me this shows that atheism entails nothing at all and so anyone who does anything related to atheism is adding their own values in to the mix. This undermines the criticism of atheism+ as deviating from the core mission as there simply is no core mission to deviate from. Atheism has no mission, we choose the one we want.

Thanks again, and apologies if this is extremely obvious to the rest of you!

#157 worksfromhome
Good luck with that argument. PZ disagrees, and there are a number of people here who strongly and violently (in as far as a blog comment can be violent) disagree. See #131 – you’re worthless trash, apparently.

Stating that you fight against religion because they are merely wrong is valid, but empty of consequences which can affect meaningful changes to people’s lives who are currently suffering due to the beliefs espoused by the religious and the acts it empowers them to commit. If you want none of the latter but all of the former then you’re quite simply a bigot.

That depends I think on what you mean by someone wanting “none of the latter.” It’s perfectly reasonable and fair to primarily argue for truth for its own sake — whether it be addressing gods, fairies, or the Loch Ness monster. In fact, those arguments can drag in some very large ideas and harms which have less to do with immediate personal suffering and more to do with basic values which, if lost, will lead to a diminished social culture and an impoverished human ‘spirit.’

And suffering. Eventually. And, as you point out, significantly.

The effects of false beliefs are diverse. If danishdynamite feels less passionate about addressing gay rights and more passionate about discussing the foolishness of the Ontological Argument (?) then it seems to me that this isn’t a problem because it’s all connected in the long run. It’s all Pharyngula and FtB material. The problem here seems to be that danishdynamite might be creating a division by complaining about a division. I think we should stop telling other atheists where their passion ought to lie because it’s more honorably or usefully connected to atheism.

That way lies the dreaded athiesm … and arguments about who is the athiest.

If you don’t understand how it poisons everything, then what are doing here?

That’s kind of hilarious coming from somebody who considers themself a dictionary atheist. It’s precisely because it contributes so much to poisoning actual quality of life for so many people that we oppose it – by opposing those inequalities.
The inequalities are front and centre. Religion facilitates them; that’s a very large part of why it’s worth fighting it. (there are other wrong ideas that aren’t really much worth fighting, such as belief in minor forms of woo or bad fashion sense, because they don’t harm anyone)

So, rather than showing that atheism does actually entail progressive values, to me this shows that atheism entails nothing at all and so anyone who does anything related to atheism is adding their own values in to the mix.

Yes and no. Valuing truth is a progressive value. Criticizing religion and proselytizing atheism embody progressive values if they’re inspired by a love of truth and justice. And now we’ve got some common values which aren’t additional, but intrinsic to a science-based enlightenment-inspired atheism. And these are progressive values which involve social justice.

So atheists who read Pharyngula and don’t have a science-based enlightenment-inspired atheism might exist, but from what I can tell that group wouldn’t include danishdynamite, you, me, or anyone else in this comment section. The more I read this thread the more I’m seeing convergence on shared values, not the absence of values.

@danishdynamite 152
First I have to say that if you want me to answer your questions, you need to answer mine or at least tell me why you can’t. Why should anyone bother with what you care about if you are not willing to show come basic concern for what they are concerned about? You are here trying to persuade people that we need to focus on “religion” and not the things related to “+”, but a good social ally will not simply ignore what potential compatriots are interested in. That will not make people think you are worth having as an ally.

1. PZ has embraced the “+”. Hence his (unfortunate) denigration.

That much was clear, but I want to understand the reasoning and the logic behind the denigration. Simply asserting someone is not admirable for something is not persuasive to more than the already persuaded. I asked questions so I could understand more.

I asked you what the point of referring to the definition of atheism was because an absence of belief is not a reason for anyone to do anything. The definition of a word only has meaning when contained in a sentence and connected to other concepts.

2. Religion is superstious nonsense. If you don’t understand how it poisons everything, then what are doing here?

I already addressed the superstition when I mentioned false narratives that are the basis for beliefs, ideas and actions.
I know why I am here (and I can tell you if you want but that is a separate issue), since you are here trying to persuade what matters is why are here. So far your contribution appears to be “Atheists making things associated with the ‘+’ in ‘Atheism+’ are not admirable”.
I want to know why you think they are not admirable and to understand that I need to know what you think it is about religion that we need to fight. We don’t just run around swinging at things painted with “religion”, the religious are:
1. Doing specific things you don’t like.
2. Thinking in specific ways you don’t like.
3. Taking specific actions you don’t like.

Everyone else here that is an atheist activist and I have our own lists that we care about for our own reasons. Why should I listen to you if I know nothing about the content of your lists?

3. I already explained why I want atheists to stick together.

Yeah, because you don’t want us divided for your strategic purposes. But since we know nothing about your purposes you are not getting very far. We need to know what it is you want to see fought when it comes to religion. Everything you have said about religion with respect to it being a threat, and none of it is useful for understanding what you want people to do and why.

#123

I want atheists of every political opinion to fight the main enemy, i.e. religion.

Let’s join together to the degree posible and fight the main enemy.

What is the enemy believing, thinking and doing that we can functionally fight? The threat that is posed by religion is contained in specific actions based in specific thought processes and beliefs.
Do you want to eradicate all foot washing ceremonies? Group meditation? Texts containing social rules (which are a neutral since there are secular texts containing social rules)? Give me a picture. If you don’t even know what you are fighting why should I trust your strategic thinking with respect to social conflict?

#157 worksfromhome
Good luck with that argument. PZ disagrees, and there are a number of people here who strongly and violently (in as far as a blog comment can be violent) disagree. See #131 – you’re worthless trash, apparently.

Speak for yourself, Blattafrax. Personally I think worksfromhome makes an interesting point and is most certainly not “worthless trash”. Thank you so much for putting words insults into (straw)people’s mouths!
An interesting point which happens to mean (as wfh points out) that the anti-A+ crowd are talking out of their respective arses: one cannot deviate from a “core mission” when there is no core mission. (actually PZ has pointed this out in multiple posts, and other commenters have also mentioned the idea; worksfromhome may or may not agree with specific individual posts/comments/etc., but I’d say there’s definitely plenty of potential common ground there.

danishdynamite @ 134: Atheism will only continue to be like herding cats as it grows and diversifies. Do you know of any majority (or large-minority) group that is united against one common enemy? If you can think of an example group that you think atheism should emulate, please name it. I can’t think of any. I realize atheism is not that big in many places (yet) but at some point along the path of growth, splintering is bound to happen.

More importantly, are atheists losing ground in opposing religion and promoting secularism while we’re splintering to address other areas of concern? I don’t see evidence for that. Religious affiliation in the U.S. (where I live) continues to decline. In the meantime, my rights are being challenged more in other areas. Should I just abandon atheist affiliation so I can go off and fight those other things? That would be worse for atheism than if I stuck around and talked about + topics, I would think.

From his first post here, it was clear that danishdynamite was here to stir shit up. When you see something like that, could you all please restrict yourselves to ONE comment in reply? When everyone makes multiple responses, it’s clear that he’s getting off on it and is thinking, “mission accomplished!”.

For atheism+ it is social justice that is added. For danishdynamite and (most of) the atheism of the previous decades, it is a desire to criticize religions and to proselytize atheism that is added. Neither of these can make any claim to be closer to “true”/”normal”/”essential” atheism.

Let’s make a distinction between (1) the fact that there are no gods, which is what it means to say “atheism is true,” and (2) what atheists of various sorts want to do with their lives or what motivates them to do that stuff, individually or as a group.

So, rather than showing that atheism does actually entail progressive values, to me this shows that atheism entails nothing at all and so anyone who does anything related to atheism is adding their own values in to the mix. This undermines the criticism of atheism+ as deviating from the core mission as there simply is no core mission to deviate from. Atheism has no mission, we choose the one we want.

What is “this”? What shows that atheism entails nothing? You started with the idea that some atheists (dictionary atheists) only want to criticize religion, presumably as atheists and on the grounds that atheism is true. This conflicts with their claim that (effectively) there is no connection between the facts and their goals or motivations, since like every human being they also have other things they want to do besides simply stating facts all day long, and their goals of criticizing religion are connected with factual claims about the nonexistence of gods. But that doesn’t tell us about the nature of atheism, because they could be mistaken or confused about the nature of atheism, and because the premise is about their lack of self-awareness or their inability to admit the internal contradictions in their own claims. The nature of atheism, just considering that, is still whatever, because they’re wrong or confused about what they’re saying about it if they’re saying anything.

It helps to substitute a more concrete meaning in place of these terms, if you’re not going to shift fallaciously between “atheism” and “atheist,” or if you put all “entailments/implications” under the same vague banner. Given atheism — if it is a fact about reality that there are no gods (or given theism, if there is a god) — that does indeed imply other facts, and given some more detail about exactly the way reality is we could be more specific about what those are. Those may not be immediately recognizable as a “mission” or a “value” (or a “progressive value”) that anyone has, and that’s not necessarily a problem for anyone, because those could be rooted somehow in non-value-laden factual claims.*

For instance, I should value equality because in fact people are equal: it is a true thing that should be reflected in our political systems and the way we conduct other interpersonal relationships. If it were the case that black people were created by a god to be enslaved by white people (for example), then we should still treat everyone equally but we’d then have to confront the fact that we’re trying to in some way change the natural order, to the extent that’s possible. Of course if this god were powerful enough, it could presumably undermine our goals more effectively than our attempts to do the same to it. But whatever the facts happen to be, that should inform our actions (or goals/motivations) because acting on false assumptions means you are not going to get the kind of results you expected.

*But here we run into the issue that factual claims are all “value-laden” or at least “theory-laden.” What I mean is that there are some simple ones that don’t reduce to moral/ethical values, although other more epistemic and practical/methodological values (which we “ought” to care about) can’t be cut out from the picture entirely.

Thank you Skatje. Haven’t tried one of those newfangled things before … you kind of need to be in the same(ish) timezone and online simultaneously with others, yes?
Will be watching this-or-any-other-space to see if other possibilities emerge also :-)

How do you know this? I’ve always thought that different people respond to different strategies.

Do you smell the eau de misogynist due to the knowledge that if they attempt to supply evidence, they will be tolerated? They are trying for “philosophical” debate. The neighborhood skunk is tame by comparison.

Do you smell the eau de misogynist due to the knowledge that if they attempt to supply evidence, they will be tolerated?

What?

I’m not familiar with ‘backupbob’ so I’m assuming you’re bringing in some back history between you. I don’t think his general point on the value of civility in discussion or debate is wrong, though as I mentioned it’s not the only useful strategy. And of course the goal is not always discussion or debate, “philosophical” or philosophical or not.

When you cease to be civil, you cease to be effective, even if you are correct. An evolutionary biologist, fed up with arguing against creationists for years convinces absolutely no one by being uncivil in response to creationist arguments.

I’m not sure that’s true. Sometimes a cultural shift towards mockery, ridicule, disgust, or astonishment might succeed in changing people’s minds — especially if the view is or was regarded as sacred, obvious, or universal. If scientists always approach creationism with kid-glove politeness it could be mistaken for respect for the opinion itself. In fact, it would be in the best interests of the creationists themselves to perceive it that way.

One of the examples I’m thinking of in particular is something I once read on the Klu Klux Klan and its dramatic fall from public acceptability when it was ridiculed on, of all places, the “Lone Ranger” radio show. But maybe this isn’t a good analogy to whatever you and NoR have been up to. But sweeping statements involving “always” and “never” when it comes to what changes people’s minds are problematic, I think. People sometimes respond to the damndest things. I won’t say sweeping statements are always wrong — but they’re a bit suspicious.

Sastra: “backupbob” sounds like a potential sock of someone who likes to use repeating pairs of characters at the beginning of their name. Think back to a recently disemvoweled commenter and how the posts of one ‘backupbob’ are merely continuations of the banned commenter’s, erm, shit-talking. Now, that isn’t verified (yet) but it’s quite possible that we have clearly another shit-stirrer poking a stick in the hornet’s nest and saying “See what a bunch of rabid commenters you have? We told you so.” That type of comment serves no purpose but to gloat. Whether misogynist or not, I will shed no tears about the rough handling of such a commenter.

An evolutionary biologist, fed up with arguing against creationists for years convinces absolutely no one by being uncivil in response to creationist arguments

BUT GODFUCKINGDAMNIT, here I am trying to be tolerant of a dissenting view, and I’m checking up on his IP address to see that he isn’t that recently banned jerk, and I discover that “backupbob” actually was banned previously in his incarnation as “Jeff S”, and after that as “Vadim Sharifijanov”.

Goddamn. Fucking hell. You try to begin cleaning up the comments, and all these fucking phonies come oozing back under pseudonyms, doing their best to sow confusion.

Now, that isn’t verified (yet) but it’s quite possible that we have clearly another shit-stirrer poking a stick in the hornet’s nest and saying “See what a bunch of rabid commenters you have? We told you so.”

Apparently ‘backupbob’ is the backup identity of someone who was banned, so it’s moot at this point. I may be out of date on trolls anyway.

One old way to test to see if someone is just coming in to reinforce a foregone conclusion regarding the civility of the Hoard is to note which parts of the Hoard they pay attention to and/or which aspects of a response they concentrate on.

Thank you PZ, for the years of enjoyment you have so generously provided me with this blog and especially the social threads. I have appreciated the space to meet and discuss any topic under the sun with such a diverse and stimulating horde of humanity, at my convenience 24/7. Even if I only lurked, there were always links to a broad range of interesting information, and photos, and new ideas to digest. I thank all the horde for your contributions, it really has been lovely for the most part to have met and hung out with you.

So I’m making changes. I’m not even going to try to foster this thing called ‘community’ any more — I will be a cold dark ember of a star, following my own whims, drifting alone, not trying to create a hospitable atmosphere.

This seems a little bleak, though I understand the impulse. I was very annoyed to wake up to a permanently closed thread and a host of new negative hostile comments from internet bystanders. I had gone to bed hopeful that healthy conflict resolution could be reached if all involved parties took a break. Sadly, it only takes a few people acting like entitled jerks to ruin any community. For those who chose to disregard PZ’s clear directive to stop using his space to hate on people, I really do hope you feel deeply ashamed of your selfish and unthinking behavior. It is truly unfortunate that the many wonderful hordlings who had nothing to do with with this snafu will no longer have a place to share and socialize.

Hey, rq! Email sent. (I had forgotten that my recent computer-meltdown-and-collapse had disabled the email address I was using before ::head-desk:: If I have seemed to ignore any possible message to that address, I very much apologise! I’ve used a different one this time.)

No idea if anyone cares but I can be found on twitter as daisyrawks. I didn’t participate in the Drum much or the lounge really at all but I’m sad they’re gone. I’m sorry it got to be a burden for you, PZ.

For sake of clarity I will use the term “atheism-”, as contrasted with atheism+, to refer to the brand of atheism that does not include social justice. I’ll also use “minimal atheism” to refer to the belief that there are no gods, but coupled with no beliefs about what should be done about this.

Sastra @159
Yes, I think you are right. The values contained in atheism+ also include many of those from “atheism-”, they just have some extra ones too. The disagreements between the two seem to be centred on whether or not these extra values should be included.

Blattafrax, opposablethumbs, @158, 166, 168
Ultimately I think opposablethumbs is right and that my argument is more of a problem for the kind of criticism leveled at atheism+ from atheism- than it is a problem for atheism+. However, I guess it is a problem for anyone interested in arguing that the values of atheism+ flow inexorably from atheism, and so I can see why Blattafrax might have thought it was endorsing “dictionary atheism” and so might have annoyed some people. If anything, I think I was redefining dictionary atheism. Referring to atheism- as dictionary atheism gives it too much credit by suggesting it is a value neutral system, which it clearly is not (it values truth, and proselytizing amongst other things). I imagine atheism- got the name dictionary atheism because its proponents so often argued against atheism+ by reference to definitions. Thus, I suggest criticisms of atheism+ that attack the supposed addition of unrelated values value are misguided because atheism- also includes unrelated values anyway – any vaguely interesting form of atheism must include other values otherwise we are left with minimal atheism, which is extremely boring.

Conciousness razor @174
I’m sorry – I don’t understand your post. I did get one of the details though: “what is ‘this’?” – ‘this’ referred to the above argument, a better wording of “this shows that atheism entails nothing” would have been “the above argument suggests that atheism entails nothing”.

A vast number of my comments on the Lounge and Thunderdome were totally ignored.
I lived through it.

I make no secret that I’ve always been fond of your comments at these places, and they always were thoughtful and self-fulfilling that there was little to add. They would erase any bitter from other people’s life and convert blues into sweeties. If anyone is like me, they couldn’t give no answer unless being shortsighted and not getting to the philosopher’s stone you were offering to everybody here.

True, it’s easier to react to partial truths or outright lies overcasted as goldish starholes in a vacuous sky, rather then acknowledging the purest vertues hidden in a giant undermoaned fridge floating around, so thank you so much for enlighting us with these gems of yours past exhausting stairs and exhausted stars. They made my days.

Truely fond of lost everyday poetry… (interrupted by alarm-clock for lil’son antibiotic drugs and a bemuddled hobbith stealing sweets and sugar candies in the Tapajos amazonas, going back to real life wonders).

Okay. I don’t object to your modification of “the above argument suggests….” in place of saying (or appearing to say) something has shown or demonstrated that the suggestion is true. Thank you, that’s all good with me.

I was claiming the nonexistence of gods does entail other facts. In the process of describing what that means, I tried to clear up a few things about that line of reasoning where some people seem to lose track of it along the way. This is not what I’m saying:

Thus, I suggest criticisms of atheism+ that attack the supposed addition of unrelated values value are misguided because atheism- also includes unrelated values anyway – any vaguely interesting form of atheism must include other values otherwise we are left with minimal atheism, which is extremely boring.

“Minimal atheism” — by which I mean the fact that no gods exist, which carries less baggage and is more minimal than “the belief that there are no gods” as you defined it — does imply lots of other facts, without the addition of any “unrelated values.” That may bore you, but the point is that it’s a true statement, which shouldn’t be considered controversial by anyone.

If it makes any sense at all, it’s at least hard to understand how any fact could fail to entail other things about the world, since it manages to be a self-consistent world without things in it being in total isolation from one another. Those facts, which can be derived from the nonexistence of gods, certainly can support specific values that people have, and they can/should inform our actions even when we have other independent (or “unrelated”) goals about how we think things should be. Notice that human actions and any values which support them are not in isolation from the rest of reality either, so apart from any discussion about how they connect to atheism, we had better look somewhere if we’re going to understand and explain what those are — they’re not just these unanalyzable primitive things that come out of nowhere.

Of course, you may reasonably think “Neptune is blue” is the sort of fact which doesn’t entail anything terribly relevant to us or how we should act. Unlike the existence of a god, that isn’t a fact about the entire structure or origins of the world, nor is it about the sort of powerful supernatural being who might do miracles or otherwise guide things in whatever direction it might want. (The details depend on which god it is, obviously, but atheism applies to all of them.) It’s really astonishing to think that somebody could entertain the notion that this (or knowing about it if it were true) wouldn’t be informative or relevant to how we live our lives. Since that seems so unlikely to me, perhaps some don’t have that clearly in their minds when they’re making claims to support “dictionary atheism.” They’re apparently thinking of something else, or something so vague they don’t know how to make any use of it, or they just don’t care whether their bullshit is true or makes any sense. It certainly doesn’t correspond to how religious people think of their own claims, nor could it correspond to how we think of their claims differently when we take them to be false.

consciousness razor:
Thanks for the response, I think I understand better now. I agree with your point that we can distinguish between belief in, and the fact of, an atheistic universe. From what I understand you are suggesting that: the fact of an atheistic universe entails other facts about our universe, collectively these facts can be brought to bear on questions about how what ought to behave, therefore, even “minimal atheism” has consequences for how we ought to behave. I would make this modification: the fact of an atheistic universe entails other facts about our universe, collectively these facts *in conjunction with value judgments* can be brought to bear on questions about how we ought to behave, therefore, “minimal atheism” *in conjunction with value judgments* has consequences for how we ought to behave.

I am trying to think of an example to support (what I take to be) your case, i.e. one in which the belief that there are no gods (in the absence of any other judgments) can inform our behavior. I can’t think of any. The closest I can think of is that atheism might lead you not to pray, but even this rests on the value judgment that you don’t want to waste your time. This might seem a hollow vision of atheism, but it is no different to that caused by the loss of a god to tell us what is right and wrong. In the case of morality, atheists must decide for themselves what constitutes moral behavior – god isn’t there to tell us. Similarly, atheists need to decide for themselves what purposes they want to put their atheism towards – atheism itself isn’t going to tell us.

I would make this modification: the fact of an atheistic universe entails other facts about our universe, collectively these facts *in conjunction with value judgments* can be brought to bear on questions about how we ought to behave, therefore, “minimal atheism” *in conjunction with value judgments* has consequences for how we ought to behave.

Well, I’m not claiming that people don’t make value judgments. People can’t help making value judgments any time they’re questioning how we ought to behave. The claim has been that facts about gods (or no gods) don’t tell us anything relevant about reality, on the basis of which we make some moral judgments. You start with some evidence or some premise about the world, then use that to make decisions like this, but of course you have to start with something. And if the premise is that there aren’t any gods, that’s going to be relevant to certain kinds of judgments that we make.

But to make it a little less vague, the claim has been that feminism or anti-racism (for example) aren’t supported in any way, shape or form by atheism. Saying anything about it is supposedly “mission drift” away from the “real” or “pure” critiques of religion, apparently to people who are unaware of (or indifferent toward) the very long history of religious ideas being used to support things like misogyny and racism. Related claims are that racist nonbelievers (e.g.) aren’t being unreasonable or implicitly assuming facts that can only make sense given a religious worldview. That argument simply doesn’t hold any water, and you simply can’t get from A to B by claiming that people make value judgments in addition to having knowledge of facts, to the extent it makes sense to distinguish those from one another in the first place since something like knowledge must itself involve a person evaluating things.

In the case of morality, atheists must decide for themselves what constitutes moral behavior – god isn’t there to tell us.

Well, hold on there. We all have to decide for ourselves anyway, with or without a god. A god commanding us to behave a certain way wouldn’t be what makes that behavior moral. The fact that there’s no god means, among other things, that this (nonexistent) thing hasn’t devised any plans for nature that we might try to know something about, it isn’t going to get in our way, it can’t force us to act against our own interests, and it can’t reward or punish us (or do anything else) for doing whatever we do. Maybe somebody out there deeply wants punishment (in the form of hellfire or bad karma or whatever) and thinks that’s good and valuable, maybe somebody else thinks that’s bad or not valuable, but it makes zero difference what anybody is valuing, since in fact it isn’t the case that a god exists to do such things. That fact by itself, and not your judgment by itself and informed by no facts, is relevant to how you’re going to judge and which judgments you make.

I don’t really know what that means. Of course atheism doesn’t literally talk. I’ll just say again that it informs how we think and how we act. There are plenty of other facts that we’re also informed about, but the nonexistence of gods is one of them. The primary reason people are resisting that is because they don’t want to admit their sexist/racists/etc. views are inconsistent with their atheistic ones. You might still say that some people are valuing the idea of having a set of consistent views, which isn’t strictly necessary or entailed by any one particular fact about the world, but that can’t be taken as a refutation of a claim that their views are inconsistent or immoral, because in fact they are whether or not you care about that or value it. And there’s nothing more principled behind that which we ought to be taking any more seriously, so it’s all just a lot of garbage.

consciousness razor:
Thanks again. I now see that whilst atheism itself doesn’t necessarily entail progressive views, rational thinking leads to both a rejection of gods and the rejection of many of the premises of bigoted views (e.g., religious or biological theories of innate differences). In this way we can expect atheism and rejection of bigotry to coincide. However, this argument cannot counter people who accept there is no rational basis for discrimination, but who just don’t care about it (indifference, as you put it). I imagine most people have a combination of unquestioned bigoted views and a certain level of indifference. Thanks again for your helpful comments, they’ve made me think a lot.

However, this argument cannot counter people who accept there is no rational basis for discrimination, but who just don’t care about it (indifference, as you put it).

I would put it differently. If they see there’s no good reason why somebody needs to suffer (in any way), then they don’t have a reason why we (including them) shouldn’t try to reduce it. And if somebody takes the stance that they simply don’t care, there’s nothing serious in that which anybody needs to counter. That’s nothing broken or inadequate about our side, because the problem is on their end.

In any case, I don’t actually see any people being totally indifferent about it — they’re claiming this is somehow a threat to “dictionary atheism” and/or that feminism, etc. are somehow wrong. But that’s all bullshit.

One of the examples I’m thinking of in particular is something I once read on the Klu Klux Klan and its dramatic fall from public acceptability when it was ridiculed on, of all places, the “Lone Ranger” radio show.

Yes! Great example. It was Superman but the point stands that often ridicule is the way to go.

Sorry to see it all end so . . . well, like it ended. Endings are, some wise one said, beginnings. Ok. I’m fine with that.

Thank you, PZ, for making the improbable routine. Your efforts will be remembered.

To the Hoard, Hail and Hello. Something this good won’t just disappear. Folks with intentional good will will find a way to stick together. Because it’s necessary and it feels really good and stuff like that.